


Tearing Through the Pages and The Ink

by SharkyIsSnarky



Series: Shark Bites: One Shots, Drabbles, and Snippets [3]
Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Character Study, F/M, I Don't Know Either, Memories, Personal Growth, Writing, don't give me that look, maybe? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 22:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16375952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharkyIsSnarky/pseuds/SharkyIsSnarky
Summary: "Each paper touched and observed as his script shifted and flowed over months and years. It may not mark him with ink but it marks the years."





	Tearing Through the Pages and The Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Colors by Halsey. 
> 
> Blame is firmly on the shoulders of Ches.

There is a box in the room he sleeps in and wakes in, a box that is never opened by any hands but his, however, the other occupants of this house have seen it time and again. It is no secret, it is merely private. A difference it took him a long time to recognize. Today he takes it out from the shelf it's stashed on free of dust and the weight is palpable. He sits on the floor in the afternoon sunlight and opens it.

Paper is something he knows well, crisp and useful, a blank page has ever been an opportunity. These are far from blank. He looks at the pages he saved, paper and ink quality wildly differ, and the top page is so worn it thins and allows light through if you hold up the fragile paper, but he could not fail to recognize them if he tried. They are the oldest surviving words in his own hand. 

He places a brief fingertip on it and then looks at the handwriting. Textbook perfect, every stroke the bare minimum. It looked like the font of a book. This was recovered from the archives three years ago, stuffed in a file labeled with a codename he only used once. It's a letter sent to Danzo to inform him of one of the deaths he caused as a young child. He hears children downstairs now and he feels. It blossoms over his heart in grey and black, a monochrome bruise he has long been able to identify as anger. If his life, his mind, were a canvas this feeling would be something to cover with white paint, to leave in the past. 

He puts it aside.

Then he looks at the next set of papers. A mission report from just after he met Team 7, writing same except for small smiling faces to mark bullet points. It's wordy and full of detail that nobody really needed. It isn't his first mission report delivered without oversight, but it is very much like it. Root had either left nothing in writing or he had made intentionally vague verbal reports copied by a senior member. The poor mission report desk had gotten so many of these before Sakura stepped in and taught him the standard expectations.  _Joyless_  she had said in what he now can remember as teasing over the gulf of years and familiarity. The smiley faces were his retaliation. Pastel Blue, a wash of nostalgia and contentment, paired with a bright tick of Golden amusement.  He can see a summer sky unfold in brushstrokes if he imagines it.

The next was a coded set of observations written in his hand on his new team but it stops halfway through the page when black ink turns into a bright orange pen that time has made harder to read. The paper has seen years pass and was originally not treated well, but he had run out of space for his notes and had to borrow paper one night. Kakashi had given him a spare page and Naruto gave him the pen. Kakashi likely knew these were notes on them all but gave him the paper anyways. Naruto only had obnoxious pens, determined to dye everything and everyone with brightness so intense it still stunned him to this day. In his heart there is Green. A color for acceptance, for peace, for the sudden last gasp of a childhood he never expected to have. Trees join the summer vista. 

A shopping list with his letters curving just slightly, mentioning supplies for a birthday cake. He recalls that had been his first attempt to bake anything. White and Cream. Structures blossom in his mind's eye.

Next a letter from Yamato-Taicho when he was on a solo mission. Short and professional but now he can recognize it as kind, so so very kind. Red and warmth, feeling and intensity, a full spectrum of that one color in its brightest hue and darkest most calming saturation. Rooftops to perch on, to shelter, to keep out rain and cold, join the image.  

An invitation scribbled in ballpoint on the back of a Yamanaka Flowers business card. The card is worn where he used to brush fingers over it and think of the word  _beautiful_. A thousand bright pops of color, for each blossom, each petal each intense moment of new and dizzying emotion he felt just seeing those eyes, that smile. He used to hide it but that first time, that ink and the cartoon heart is what makes the world in his picture bloom like a garden. He can't really hide it now if he tried. He doesn't want to try. 

It goes on, each paper touched and observed as his script shifted and flowed over months and years. It may not mark him with ink but it marks the years. Simple words made new by flamboyant brushstrokes, or a tide of emotion demure with rounded and basic lines. A thousand memories and sensations bursting and creating a palette of colors he loves dearly.

One he loves perhaps best of all, the rest of the paper written by other hands, but his name, her name, and a new name that sends the saturation levels soaring and the world into brighter more beautiful shades than he ever imagined. These are the colors he would use to paint this village. 

Finally, he looks at the birthday card that sparked this little distraction, a hundred sheets of paper put to the side carefully and in precise order. It's childish and cutesy, but that's the design he and Inojin had settled on together, and for that and the slight imperfections he holds it above any carefully wrought creation his hands have ever produced alone. He selects a lavender pen, flexible felt tip, not weak but able to bend when needed. A beautiful beloved color- 

And Sai writes.


End file.
